Epic Games has announced a long-term, multi-platform Unreal Engine 3 reseller and support agreement with Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates, Inc. Under this agreement, Virtual Heroes will license UE3 to agencies, departments, and units of the US and allied governments in order to support government developers through the established Unreal Government Network (UGN).

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) awarded ARA-Virtual Heroes a >$10M, multi-year contract under the Sirius program. The goal of the Sirius program is to develop serious games that result in better decision-making by teaching participants to recognize and mitigate the effects of their own biases when analyzing information used to make decisions.

Virtual Heroes, in collaboration with the Duke University Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center, is creating an anesthesiology training application for Army physicians.

Virtual Heroes is developing the UE3-powered HumanSim platform for medical education and training.

The FBI Academy is using UE3 to develop a multiplayer crime scene training simulation to meet the needs of the FBI.

A top five defense contractor and a national laboratory have licensed UE3 and UGN to address their needs for custom model integrations and visualization.

“We recognize the growing market needs of our government customers and are excited to have Virtual Heroes provide a full spectrum of focused services and support using our game engine technology,” said Epic president Michael Capps.

In addition, ARA’s Virtual Heroes and Epic will lead sessions during the Defense GameTech Users’ Conference in Orlando, Florida this week.